What If The Perfect Piece Never Finds Me?
I firmly believe in waiting for the perfect piece to arrive to you
Remember that ruined striped T-shirt I told you about in January? I still haven’t found its replacement. It’s been seven months since it got irretrievably stained. I’m also on the lookout for a classic black handbag. I’ve worn my favorite one from Mango Sticky Rice Vintage out. It went everywhere with me - cars, planes, trams, bikes, fancy dinners, meetings, picnics, and yoga classes. I’m not proud of it. That’s not how you take good care of a beloved garment. But, as Jerry Seinfeld would put it - it is what it is. I’ll try to get it repaired.
“You can’t walk around like that,” my dad told me the other day about my ruined bag that I refuse to stop wearing. “You need a new bag ASAP,” said my husband as if he overheard what my colleague Veronika had told me the day before. I get it - the bag looks pretty beat up by now. But so what? Are the worn-out police going around taking people’s shabby garments away? Is there a special place in hell for those who dare to walk around with battered accessories?
I’m at this point in my life where I need my clothes to have meaning. Most of the things I own mean something to me, and when I’m looking for something new, I need it to mean something, too. Intensively looking for it online and in stores will rarely fulfill that requirement. I firmly believe in waiting for the perfect piece to arrive to you. It has happened before. Once, I went searching for a classic blue shirt. Women’s departments were not helpful, and men’s had details in all the wrong places (think tiny buttons on collars or one placed either too low or too high to wear it slightly unbuttoned). I called my mom after and told her about the experience, and to my surprise, she said: “Come on over, I have one I don’t wear.” It was the perfect shirt, slightly oversized with buttons in the right places.
I know the same thing will happen with a perfect striped T-shirt and a classic bag. But even if it doesn’t, so what? We constantly convince ourselves that we need all these things to be complete - the perfect dress, that kitchen table we saw in a magazine, an apartment worthy of guests, a husband or a child. None of these things complete us. A new bag might complete my style at best, but as a person, I’m entirely content without one. And what will complete me? Wrapping this newsletter early today, even though at the back of my head, I might think it’s not long enough, and closing the laptop to go to a yoga class. A rainy day that accidentally collides with my decision to stay in and write the whole day. That hour I spent planting peas today. My cat playing with a discarded delivery box. A finished book. So if the perfect piece never finds me - I’m perfectly fine with that.
I firmly believe this is beautifully written